BANGALORE: Private equity giant Blackstone Group's aggressive buyouts of office space building shows little sign of abating. Blackstone, which has struck a string of deals with developers , including DLF, is in fairly advanced talks to snap up one of the largest IT park developments, Bangalore-based Vrindavan Tech Village , paying up roughly between Rs 800-900 crore ($160 milion), said people directly aware of the matter.

This comes even as Blackstone is vying with other global investors Mapletree and Xander Group for a potential buyout of Unitech's IT park at Dundahera, near Gurgaon, as foreign capital lap up rent accruing real estate assets in India .

Blackstone is completing due diligence on Vrindavan Tech Village with 2.1 million sft of tenanted space and 75 acre undeveloped land. The Vrindavan promoters has 106 acres (through lease and sale model from the state government ) to develop up to 9 million sft, of which 25 acre has been used for the initial phase. The existing tenants include Cisco, Sony, Ness Technologies , Nokia, and Talisma.

The deal is expected to value Vrindavan at about Rs 2,200 crore after factoring Rs 1,200 crore debt and possible payouts to state government to settle the lease-cum-sale model. The project also has an ongoing arbitration with Citigroup , which provided mezzanine financing to project in the past, said sources.

Vrindavan TechVillage, which is located on Outer Ring Road, is promoted by industrialist Mithilesh Kumar Tripathi, chairman of Vikas Telecom and is being developed by Assetz , a property development company, which also has sweat equity.

Blackstone and Assetz declined to comment, while Vikas Telecom could not be reached for immediate comments. Another southern developer RMZ Corp too have been in discussion but failed to agree on a deal with Vrindavan promoters due to "technical glitches" .

Blackstone will rope in its local joint venture partner Embassy Group, if it goes ahead with the deal. Two months ago, the PE investor paid Rs 1,015 crore to strike an equal JV with Embassy to own and manage technology parks in India.

At least three investors, including Blackstone, has been in the fray to acquire Unitech InfoSpace, a 3.6-million-sft tech park nearing completion next year. This is part of Unitech's office space portfolio which is owned by the real estate developer's AIM listed entity Unitech Corporate Parks. Unitech did not respond to emailed queries at the time of going to press.

Blackstone, like its peers, Ascendas and Xander, plans to aggregate office space assets before taking them for an overseas REIT listing. The strategy aims to provide global investors a stable platform to buy into India's volatile real estate market. The buyout fund owns hotels, shopping malls and office buildings primarily in North America and Europe.

Blackstone has shown appetite for Indian office buildings and struck smaller deals with developers like DLF in the past two years. Last year, it paid Rs 810 crore to acquire DLF's IT SEZ in Pune. Blackstone's real estate portfolio includes Hilton hotels and the recent acquisition of Motel 6 from Accor.